Thursday, May 6, 2004

I'm on tour with the Postal Service again. I'm about to start playing but there's something wrong-- like, I think I should be playing first but I'm playing last, or vice versa-- I can't remember the exact details. I'm not angry but things aren't ideal. We're playing at a college that is out there in rural Virginia. There's a lot of caves and caverns and mines in this town-- actually, that's really all there are, caves and long empty stretches of road and an occassional abandoned-looking barn. The classes are held in the caves. The show is in a little cabaret in a cave, with a small stage and when you're standing on it, your head almost touches the ceiling.

After the show I know everybody at the school because I suddenly go here, and have gone here for a while. In a huge cavernous room with giant stacks of bleachers on each side, there is a game/class going on. Kids on either side of the bleachers are on different teams and they are supposed to kill each other with toy weapons. There are toy rifles, toy pistols, and toy daggers. I am the "general" in charge of my side and I am very upset that at least half of the kids on either side don't seem to have a weapon at all and are just goofing around. When the game starts I aim at a kids' head way across the cave on the other bleachers and squeeze the trigger. These toy guns don't shoot any projectile, nor do they seem bulky enough to shoot some kind of light beam, so I don't know how kids are supposed to know that they've been shot, but I've seen a few go down in a realistic way, so I assume they work somehow. Some kids on the other side start throwing rocks and we're all really scared of them, they look like they hurt. A big group of jock boys stands up and turns their backs in my direction, so I use my toy rifle to unleash a torrent of pretend bullets at their backs. Nothing happens, they don't notice. I tell the kids immediately next to me that I'm going to crawl over to the room where they keep the toy guns and get new ones because I think the ones we have are broken. I crawl through the bleachers, trying to avoid incoming pretend-fire and actual rocks.

I find the gym teacher near the storage room and tell him that hardly anyone is actually trying to kill the kids on the other side, and that I'm not sure how the rocks fit in--- are they grenades? He smelts me a ring in the storage room, a ring that has a 1/4" triange facing down, two squares, and then another triangle. I love it. Each shape is divided in half and one half is smooth gold and the other half is cross-hatched with a grid of silver scratches. It looks like the ring I had made at Busch Gardens years ago when I told the lady at the monogrammed ring booth that my name was "BALLSOUT." (I actually did lose that ring in gym class, now that I think about it.)

I take the ring and leave the gym and walk into a music video that the Yeah Yeah Yeahs are shooting live as it premieres on MTV. The singer is a lot younger and college-r looking than I would have expected. At the beginning of the video an animated flying purple furball flies past an animated dog-like creature to the place (in rural Virginia) where the Yeah Yeah Yeahs are playing. The guitarist is playing piano and I recognize him from the time I met him in England. The drummer, at one point (in the video), tells some sound guy off screen to make his drum sound "more cripsy." There is the audible sound of the drum mic overloading for a second, then it returns to normal. I think to myself, "That's kind of a neat thing to put in a video."

After they're done, I walk up to them. I didn't see the crew shooting the video while I watched it, and I don't see them now, although I can kind of feel people walking around. I talk to the band and ask them some questions. They are very nice. They know who I am, which surprises me, but I play it off cool like no big deal, of course they know who I am. I ask them where they're going next, and they tell me the name of a venue that I don't recognizes. "Wingbirds" or "Winghouse" or "Wing-something." I think it might be in Pittsburgh but I don't know for sure, I ask them where that is. They ask a crew guy that is wandering around, taking down cables or other equipment from the video. He says the town is called "Andy" and I'm pretty positive that is in PA, but it doesn't seem to mean anything to the band.

I ask them if they are going north or south, and they say they don't know. The crew guy asks somebody else, a local guy who is helping out, if Andy, PA is north or south and they don't know either. I ask the band if they came from the north or the south when travelling from their last show and they scratch their chins but can't come up with the answer. Then somebody notices my ring.